Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began tearing up Beehiiv Vine University.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for creating newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately opt for it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually means utilizing several different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a system that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content maker, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vine University
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of content like videos, links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting platform for any type of newsletter creator.
Here are several of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send e-mails. I stated above several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Vine University.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I love Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anyone looking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review messages frequently. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.